be as happy as your wife," retorted Felicity reddening.

"He'll be the happiest man in the world," declared Peter warmly.

"What about me?" asked Sara Ray.

The Story Girl looked rather puzzled. It was so hard to imagine Sara Ray
as having any kind of future. Yet Sara was plainly anxious to have her
fortune told and must be gratified.

"You'll be married," said the Story Girl recklessly, "and you'll live to
be nearly a hundred years old, and go to dozens of funerals and have a
great many sick spells. You will learn not to cry after you are seventy;
but your husband will never go to church."

"I'm glad you warned me," said Sara Ray solemnly, "because now I know
I'll make him promise before I marry him that he will go."

"He won't keep the promise," said the Story Girl, shaking her head. "But
it is getting cold and Cecily is coughing. Let us go in."

"You haven't told my fortune," protested Cecily disappointedly.

The Story Girl looked very tenderly at Cecily--at the smooth little
brown head, at the soft, shining eyes, at the cheeks that were often
over-rosy after slight exertion, at the little sunburned hands that were
always busy doing faithful work or quiet kindnesses. A very strange look
came over the Story Girl's face; her eyes grew sad and far-reaching, as
if of a verity they pierced beyond the mists of hidden years.

"I couldn't tell any fortune half good enough for you, dearest," she
said, slipping her arm round Cecily. "You deserve everything good and
lovely. But you know I've only been in fun--of course I don't know
anything about what's going to happen to us."

"Perhaps you know more than you think for," said Sara Ray, who seemed
much pleased with her fortune and anxious to believe it, despite the
husband who wouldn't go to church.

"But I'd like to be told my fortune, even in fun," persisted Cecily.

"Everybody you meet will love you as long as you live." said the Story
Girl. "There that's the very nicest fortune I can tell you, and it will
come true whether the others do or not, and now we must go in."

We went, Cecily still a little disappointed. In later years I often
wondered why the Story Girl refused to tell her fortune that night.
Did some strange gleam of foreknowledge fall for a moment across her
mirth-making? Did she realize in a flash of prescience that there was
no earthly future for our sweet Cecily? Not for her were to be the
lengthening shadows or the fading garland. The end was to